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Friday, May 4, 2012

Film Score Friday! John Williams - War Horse

So i had the opportunity to finally watch Spielberg's War Horse earlier this week and I have to say although I wasn't thrilled by it from the trailer, it was actually a pretty good film overall. this semester I took a class entitled The American Film Artist, which is a class that focuses on a single director for a whole semester, this semester happened to be Steven Spielberg and we finished on his most recent film. In class we talked about how this film is Spielberg finally accepting who he is and making a film for himself. That's eseentially what this film is seeing as it's got everything Spielberg loves filmmaking wise. To put it simply, this is possibly the most 'Spielbergian' film yet.

The same however could be said about the score. Done by John Williams who has done practically every film for Spielberg since Jaws. There's something about a John Williams score that makes it easily identifiable, but standout among many other composers. Similarly to Spielberg this is arguably the most John Williams sounding John Williams has ever been. In a good way.

This film really comes off as a labor of love from both the director and composer.

Here's the trailer for those who haven't seen it:

The score has songs on it that evoke the playfulness of some scenes from ET, but other tracks evoke the feeling of sorrow in some of the darker scenes of Saving Private Ryan. It quite often goes from somber moments, to almost a bit cheesy happy moments. But John Williams just pulls it off so well. The score works fantastically well with the film, but also stands fairly well on it's own. It's pretty calm soundtrack overall and is nice to sit down and read or write to.

Overall both the score and the film are worth checking out. It's not the best thing Spielberg or Williams have done, but they may be the most honest and personal pieces they've done. Definitely worth your time.